Dealer Resources

In the first half of 2014, General Motors recalled more cars than it sold in the last five years according to this article. Between the lawsuits, hearings at Capital Hill, internal investigations, delivering new parts to dealers, getting drivers to bring in their recalled cars – this is the general state of General Motors.

The automaker, already fined a maximum of $35 million, is looking at an even larger settlement expected to be in the billions. Just last month in May of 2014, Toyota agreed to pay $1.2 billion for misleading consumers and the government on their own recalls. [keep reading]

A few months back we studied over 35,000 emails to dealerships on Mojo Motors from shoppers interesting in buying a car. What we found was shoppers don’t care about recalls. Only two people asked about them. That’s right, only .005 percent of people asked about recalls. Since that article was published, there have been something like a billion more vehicle recalls and that’s not counting those GM recalls.

Shoppers now must really be wary of open recalls on used cars. They aren’t. In a study of nearly 20,000 new email leads to dealers since May, not a single person mentioned the word recall. Most people don’t even ask questions as the majority of people (81 percent) use the stock email message. Here’s what everyone else (19 percent) wanted to know. [keep reading]

Have you ever wondered what the name of your car means or maybe how manufacturers come up with names? After all, we say names like Camry, Miata and Passat without pausing to think if those names have a meaning. Turns out almost every car name has some significance that can be grouped into 12 categories.

Our study looked at 215 models, but there were exclusions. We left out some discontinued models and models with letter-number naming conventions used by BMW, Lexus and Mercedes. [keep reading]

We recently published this popular infographic about the states where driverless cars are legal. While researching, we discovered there are a lot of different predictions around when the average person will actually be able to buy a self-driving car. Some automakers are already selling cars with self-driving technology. Others are predicting they will have a full lineup of self-driving cars in just over a decade. We took predictions from experts and automakers and put it all together in one beautiful infographic.

Make sure to click on the infographic below for the full-size view.

Like the infograph?

Sign up for updates with the latest infographics, news and car shopping tips.

So how realistic are these predictions? The march towards autonomous cars is inevitable, but the obstacles facing the automotive industry before driverless cars reach consumers are immense. These obstacles include technology, social attitudes, legislation and infrastructure. [keep reading]

“The price you see is the price you pay” said every car dealer ever at some point. That isn’t really the whole truth because a price tag that might fit comfortably within your budget doesn’t factor in the taxes and dealer fees. Once those costs are added into the final price, you might be thousands over budget! See how much extra you might be paying in your state below.

Like the infographic?

Subscribe for updates with the latest automotive infographics.

And these aren’t the only fees you’ll face either. We’ve listed out the six most common dealer fees here since each dealer approaches fees a bit differently. For the purposes of the this study and the infographic above, we honed in on state and local taxes, registration fees and dealer documentation fees. The costs were calculated based on a used car listed for sale at $16,500. That’s about the average price for a 2011 Honda Accord, one of the most followed cars on MojoMotors.com.

So what are state and local taxes, registration fees and dealer doc fees? Here’s an explanation of each. [keep reading]

Mojo Motors Founder & CEO Paul Nadjarian spoke to a crowd of over one hundred dealership managers and owners during his Digital Dealer 16 session called “The biggest miss in your digital marketing strategy.” The event was held from April 6 to 8 in Atlantic City and is one of the prominent dealership conventions addressing the changing consumer trends and opportunities for the auto industry to increase walk-in and web traffic, along with proven methods to improve customer experience, spur more car sales and motivate employees.

So what was the biggest miss? Alerts. Dealerships aren’t leveraging the power of alerts to push shoppers through the funnel, influence purchase decision and create an urgency to buy. Alerts are used in the flight and real estate industries, but automotive is lagging behind. In fact, if you consider alerts to be web 2.0, the auto industry is still stuck in web 1.0. [keep reading]

Before you get all angry about the link bait title, try this stat on for size. Since April 13th, 2014 there have been nearly 350,000 Tweets with the word “recall” according to Topsy. This doesn’t even come close to the nearly 800,000 Tweets containing the word “vampire” or 1.4M Tweets containing the word “taco.” Tweets about recalls does, however, beat the 49 Tweets containing “vampire taco.”

Using social queues like keywords isn’t totally indicative of what shoppers care about, so we went further. In a study of over 35,000 email leads to car dealerships on MojoMotors.com, only two people asked about a vehicle recall. TWO! That’s .005 percent! This is interesting because as automakers continue breaking records left and right by recalling millions of vehicles for anything from spiders to electronic issues, shoppers still don’t care. If they do care about recalls, they definitely aren’t showing it in Tweets or emails to dealers. It would seem recalls are more important to the small number of people directly affected by said recalls, the government and the media. [keep reading]

Paul’s presentation is titled ‘Biggest Miss in Your Digital Marketing Strategy’ and will take a look at how dealers can leverage online tools to increase sales. The internet is shifting from browsing-based platforms to alert-based platforms. The increased penetration of mobile is accelerating this shift. Learn why alerts are the future, strategies to be more intelligent with your digital marketing and how to use alerts to drive more urgency and close more sales. There will be a case study on the evolution and shift to alerts in other industries. The workshop will also show how these trends apply to automotive and your dealership.

See Paul in Room 314 from 2:00 – 2:50PM on Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Check out the 16th Digital Dealer website here.

About Digital Dealer

The Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition is the premier educational conference and exposition dedicated to internet and technology solutions for automotive professionals.

About Mojo Motors

Mojo Motors is an automotive classified website launched in 2010. Shoppers ‘Follow’ used cars to get alerts when dealers drop prices or add cars to their inventory. The website is free to car shoppers and dealers pay a monthly fee.

Imagine a national media rep said they could get your dealership millions of impressions for free. The only thing you have to do allow is a broadcast crew unlimited access to your staff and the inner-workings of your dealership. This includes price negotiations, office gossip, service writers pricing out costs, etc. You’re probably not so keen on that offer anymore, right? What about if this press could bring you some sales?